Enrichment

October 5 2020

Dog Walks: More Than Exercise

October brings many things: fall colors with leaves changing, early voting, Halloween, and National Walk Your Dog Week. With the dangers of pet obesity, many pet owners participate in this first week of October each year to improve their dog’s health.

Walking dogs stretches back to 7000 BC in northeastern Siberia, where dogs received training to pull snow sleds to places where people could not access. Nowadays, more than 40% of dogs in the United States fall into the overweight category. And, especially with stay-at-home orders, many adults haven’t had the exercise they’ve been accustomed to. It’s also an excellent way for you and your furry friends to improve physical and mental health.

What are the benefits? To humans, improved cardiovascular functions, decreasing your stress, reducing depression or anxiety, and lowering blood pressure and risk for diabetes.

For dogs, walking regularly controls their weight, improves their joint and digestive health, and engages them with social and behavioral training time. But walking also actively calms a dog’s brain through sniffing. Dogs who are permitted to smell their surroundings experience a release which leaves them calmer and more balanced.

Picking a consistent time of day will benefit you by making this an everyday, easy-to-remember habit. Analyze your schedule to see when you feel the most anxiety in your day or need a few minutes to clear your head. Also look to when your dog is most energetic.

What about puppies? Puppies need special care with growing joints and bodies that can be damaged from too strenuous activity. Puppy walks should include 5 minutes for each month of age, then work up to longer distances as they become more capable.

During extreme heat, avoid pavement or sidewalks, walk early morning or late evening, and bring water for both you and your dog. For winter temps, depending on your breed, invest in coats or booties to protect their feet.

Look at your dog during and after walks – if they seem stiff or have a not completely healed injury, take it slow. Ideally, walk your dog twice each day, and, for older dogs, multiple shorter walks works better than longer ones.

In addition to walking your current dog, National Walk Your Dog Week endeavors to increase awareness of dogs in shelters who wait for their forever home. You can adopt or, alternately, volunteer at local shelters to walk the dogs, providing yourself exercise while giving back and offering the dogs companionship.

June 25 2020

How to Enrich Your Bird’s Life

Birds, Enrichment, Pet Care

Did you realize your bird benefits from exercise and enrichment through play and other activities? Enrichment categories include habitat, cognitive, and sensory (visual, social, tactile, and auditory), and caregivers can actively engage their birds, keeping them from becoming bored even while you’re at work.

Habitat enrichment
For habitat stimulation, introduce various perches at different heights, small plants, ladders, ropes, or swings. These encourage movement, to increase your bird’s activity level when you cannot allow him to safely fly around inside your home. You can also place pinecones, cotton rope, grapevine or willow wreaths, and carefully-cleaned small twigs from outdoors inside their cages.

Cognitive enrichment
Most birds are accustomed to foraging for food, and owners should switch to food acquisition challenges over free access to a bowl of birdseed. Since these species typically spend most of their day in the wild searching for food, replicating it for them prevents them from becoming bored. Engaging their mind and occupying their time also has the benefit of reducing unwanted behaviors, such as screeching.

You can wrap food in butcher’s paper and place in treat boxes, treasure chests, or pull-out drawers to hide around their cage. Place multiple types of foraging activities around their environment to encourage activity while you’re away during the day.

Sensory enrichment
Since birds are social and visual animals, they love observing and interacting with other animals. Though abrupt shifts in their environment can shock them, try (slowly) moving their cage next to a window to change their view. Incorporating different mirrors allows them to look at and talk to themselves.

Birds receive tactile enrichment from various toys. Sanitize toys immediately after you purchase them and then periodically re-sanitize to avoid a buildup of dust or allergens. However, though birds enjoy playing, they can remain suspicious of new items for a while. After a few weeks, they might show interest in the new toys, especially if you play with it so they can overcome any distrust of the new item.

Auditory stimulation from leaving the television or radio on will give them the chance to listen and talk back to other species, for increased socialization. You can even use recordings of your voice! Birds like nature or animal programs on television or the radio as well. Talking to the programs and sounds of other animals feeds their social tendencies.

Plan ahead to incorporate new and challenging activities into your bird’s environment each day to keep them mentally and psychologically engaged. It keeps them busier and healthier overall!